Main news for 2 March 2025

The question of fasting is one of the main questions for many Christians. Christians are not original in this: it was also one of the central questions for the Jews, and had been for quite a long time, several centuries before the Messiah came. Why did it take such an important place in Jewish life? In the beginning, fasting did not receive all that much attention in Yahwism. Yes, of course, on days of mourning, whether personal or public, fasting was observed, and observed strictly (Jewish fasts were usually complete; people abstained from food and water throughout the whole day, and if the fast lasted several days, which did not happen often, one could eat and drink only after sunset).

But already in the post-exilic period, in the synagogue environment, a practice of regular one-day fasts took shape and remained in place at least until the end of the Second Temple period. This practice was followed, among others, by members of the Pharisaic brotherhood. Apparently there were two such regular fasts per week in the Gospel era. It was expected that on those days everyone would fast while remembering his own sins. If this had truly been so, such a fast would have brought unquestionable spiritual benefit.

The same can be said, of course, about church fasts, whose meaning in the end also comes down either to remembering one's own sins or to remembering the Savior's death on the cross and Judas's betrayal. But even before the coming of Christ, something happened that completely distorted the essence and meaning of fasting for sins: it turned into a religious obligation. Over time, much the same thing happened to a large extent with our Christian fasts too, despite the Savior's corresponding warnings.

Judging by Isaiah's words, one may think that this transformation began quite early, soon after the Jews returned to Judea from the Babylonian exile, if not earlier. Fasting begins to be perceived as a kind of self-restraint valuable in itself, as a sort of punishment of oneself for sins committed. It is presumed that God needs all this, and that the person who acts this way accordingly becomes closer to God and more pleasing to Him. Later there also arose a pious myth that fasting supposedly cleanses a person from sin or from its consequences.

All this, of course, was quite far from reality. It is self-evident that no person can cleanse himself from sin. Such cleansing requires God's immediate intervention, His direct action. Nor is there any special benefit for the spiritual life in self-restraint as such. God does not need it. Any self-restraint is valuable only insofar as it allows a person to understand himself, to see the true motives of his actions, to see his sins, and to understand how to resist them.

But even here self-restraint alone is not enough: like any spiritual work, this presupposes God's participation, without which no self-restraint by itself will reveal anything useful to a person. Yet religious consciousness tends to absolutize the significance of fasting in itself. All the more so because the distinction between those who fast and those who do not becomes one of the signs of belonging to a religious community.

And then fasting, having become an end in itself, begins to disorient a person and destroy his spiritual life. It forces a person to spend strength and time on something that from a spiritual point of view gives him nothing. And sometimes it even causes harm: many religious people begin to take pride in their fasts, wondering why God does not notice their efforts. And they become all the more convinced of their own rightness the more success they achieve in this peculiar religious sport. Only the prize for the winner in this competition is not the Kingdom, but a feeling of deep religious satisfaction. And that is a poor substitute for the Kingdom.

Isa 58:5

NOTES

Fasting, as a religious practice, was known both to Yahwism and to Judaism. Still, neither Yahwism nor Judaism knew multi-day fasts like those that...

Fasting, as a religious practice, was known both to Yahwism and to Judaism. Still, neither Yahwism nor Judaism knew multi-day fasts like those Christians of the Middle Ages came to practice. The original meaning of a fast was mourning, usually for a deceased relative, and such a mourning fast could usually last from one to three days. The fast was ordinarily complete: those fasting ate and drank nothing from the evening of the day before the fast until the evening of the fast day itself. In addition, whole cities or villages could take on fasts in the event of some disaster, especially one that was known (often from a prophet's words) to have been allowed by God because of the inhabitants' sins. But such fasts were one-time fasts, and those who fasted took them on for a specific occasion each time.

In the post-exilic period, when the religious life of the Jewish people was already unthinkable outside the synagogue, the practice arose of regular one-day fasts, usually twice a week. These were no longer connected with specific events (in such cases people fasted additionally), but were regarded as a kind of spiritual exercise, and performing it was a religious obligation for every believing Jew. These fasts were understood to be connected with the sins a person fasting might have committed (perhaps without even knowing it), but, as usually happens in such cases, they became a simple formality, a kind of "sacrifice" to God that the fasting person offered Him by refusing water and food for a whole day. Few thought to ask whether God needed such a fast at all. Abstaining from food and drink, it was thought, was supposed to make the fasting person leave the ordinary rut of everyday life, remember God and his neighbor, and experience anew and vividly what a person tends to forget in the bustle of daily routine. In practice, however, abstinence itself became part of the everyday religious routine, as familiar as the routine itself.

In such a situation the prophet had to remind those who fasted that fasting is not simply a religious obligation and not a sacrifice to God, who does not need exercises in abstinence in themselves, but a way to shift a person's attention from himself to God and to his neighbors. If a fast does not fulfill this function, God does not need it and it does the person no good.

Chapter 58 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, which we read today, is an astonishing text whose significance for Christians is hard to overestimate...

Today the prophet Isaiah tells us how any works we do while obeying God and acknowledging His rightness...

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